Author(s): Andreas Aditya Hermawan, Muhammad Irfan Rahman, Amin Talei, Fang Yenn Teo
Linked Author(s): Amin Talei
Keywords: tropical biofiltration system, stormwater treatment, nutrient removal, submerged
Abstract: Stormwater quantity and quality management is one of the major concerns in fast developing countries significant growth in urbanization. Urbanization has caused deterioration in stormwater quality and has increased floods� peak, volume, and frequency. One of the components of Best Management Practice (BMP) to address such issue is biofiltration system which consists of a layered soil system covered with plants on the top. Plants play a major role of removing nutrients and maintaining the hydraulic conductivity of the system. To assure plants survival during dry period, submerged zone can be provided by raising the outlet level. This will provide internal water storage for plants to survive. Although biofiltration systems are well studied in many countries including US and Australia, very limited studies are conducted for tropical conditions. In the present study, a water sensitive plant was selected from 10 local plants candidates through a monitoring process. Then, an experimental setup consisting of soil columns with three different levels of submerged zone were provided and tested for watering gap from 0 up to 10 days. The performance of the system in removing heavy metals, Total Nitrogen (TN), and Total Phosphorus (TP) was measured. Results showed that submerged zone even with lowest level can still support plants survival during dry period. Columns with high level of submerged zone were found to be more successful in removing TN and TP. For heavy metals, however, all three levels of submerged zones produce almost same results in heavy metal removal showing that heavy metal removal is independent of submerged zone level. It was also concluded that removing Fe can be affected by a prolonged dry period. This was attributed to the potential cracks in soil during dry period which can reduce surface contact between Fe ions and filter media particles
Year: 2017